Photo By Michael Drager
In the words of Aristotle, “Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.” Indeed, poetry is a rich tradition passed down from far beyond even Aristotle’s ancient time, no doubt beyond the first pages of written history. Something about poetry has always echoed within human hearts and minds, and while it does not always seem as important as the great issues of the day, many great poets like Homer and Shakespeare remain as famous as any politician or general. It is for that timeless importance of poetry that the State of Arkansas chooses to recognize the skill and emotion that can be carried by words by naming a poet laureate. Today, that title belongs to Suzanne Underwood Rhodes.
The tradition of poet laureates is one that dates back to the classical era, when military heroes or the winners of athletic, singing, music or poetry contests would be awarded with crowns made from laurel leaves. The practice was revived in Renaissance Italy, and John Dryden was named the first poet laureate of England in 1668, but it would not be until the 20th century that the long and storied tradition would come to America.
Though there was no U.S. Poet Laureate until 1937, Arkansas actually established its own position of poet laureate more than a decade earlier in 1923. Since then, there have been only eight poets thus honored, with Suzanne Underwood Rhodes holding the title since January 2022. The details of the position have shifted over time; it was once a lifetime appointment, but since 2017, it has been subject to four-year term limits.
Rhodes is a native of New York but now lives and teaches in Fayetteville. Poetry has been a part of her life since she was very young, she explained, and she wrote her first poem when she was 6 years old.
“I had a mother who was wonderful,” Rhodes said. “She was a very literary person herself, and she read books and stories to me and my sisters from the time we were small until we learned to read on our own. Books were an important part of my life growing up, and I always had a very active imagination, so I was able to feed that with fairy tales.
Rhodes earned a bachelor’s degree in English at James Madison University in Virginia, followed by a master of arts degree from Johns Hopkins University in Maryland. A teacher by trade, she has served as an adjunct professor at schools at King University, East Tennessee State University, Old Dominion University, Tidewater Community College and others, teaching subjects such as literature, composition, creative writing and, of course, poetry. She has also led many writing workshops through organizations like the Muse Writers Center in Norfolk, Virginia. Though she moved to Northwest Arkansas from Virginia Beach in 2018 to be closer to her grandson, the pandemic normalized online classes, allowing her to continue teaching an intermediate poetry workshop back in Norfolk.
“Some of the people I teach are retired, some of them are working professionals, and some are even college students,” Rhodes said. “Then I have the regulars who sign up time after time, and it’s very rewarding to see their progress. I take some credit for that, but the dynamics of the workshop are so helpful because of the feedback they get from one another and how they learn to be better critics of other poems.”
Just about every poet you ask will give you a different answer on what poetry is, which is hardly surprising given the way a poet deals in words. Rhodes described “the real wrapped in vision,” a method of translation by which she turns the things she sees into words and metaphors. As a result, themes like nature, geography and living creatures are common themes in her works.
Rhodes described one case where she was visiting her daughter in Utah and the two went on a camping trip to Goblin Valley State Park. While there, some old relationship issues came to light, and Rhodes was faced with past mistakes. The landscape of Goblin Valley, with its bizarre, mushroom-shaped rock features called “goblins” by the locals, “was an absolutely perfect way to describe the guilt that I owned up to for what I had done,” Rhodes said, “but also the hope for forgiveness and restoration.”
Another favorite topic in her writing is persona poems, a type of poetry that takes on the persona of someone else, about women in literature and history. These have included figures such as Dorothy Bradford, who sailed aboard the Mayflower, and Mary Rowlandson, a colonist in the 1600s who was taken captive by Native Americans and later wrote one of the most famous “captivity narratives” in American literature.
“And then family poems,” Rhodes said. “The blood ties, as we all have scars and things we’re always working on. Probably until the end of my days, I’ll be trying to understand the complexities of life. I was the child of divorce and subsequently had an abusive stepfather. Poetry for me has always been a place that I can go to where I can find pleasure, and I’m not going to use the word escape. It’s just a world alongside the actual world, the imaginative life, which I thank God for.”
Just as poetry means something different for every poet, all poets have their own way of writing, their own guiding principles. Rhodes is an old hand at the work; though there have been dry seasons, she has been publishing poetry for many years and is working on still more. She describes the revision process as critical, with all of the labor and discipline that comes with it. Yet despite that gritty description, she loves the process.
“Seeking that perfection, striving for it, pulls together all of your intellect and spirituality to get ‘The best word in the best order’ as Coleridge said,” Rhodes said. “Some poems don’t need so much revision, but I have others that I’ve been writing for years and years, and I finally had to abandon some of them.”
Revising can be about finding the perfect word, for which Rhodes notes an internet thesaurus is a great help, but it is also about knowing when there are too many words. You must also know when to cut and when the poem ends, rather than going on and on.
“Cut out words,” Rhodes says, “until you get to the core thing that you really feel.”
When writing, Rhodes explained that “to see and to hear” are the most important things; the things one sees and hears should be reflected in their poetry through imagery, through the musical aspects of sound, rhythm, internal rhyme and all of the many tools in a poet’s toolbox. Figurative language and idioms in particular are handy devices of which she frequently encourages her students to make better use.
Regular practice complements revision as an important part of the discipline behind poetry, though Rhodes admits that she doesn’t always observe that tenet herself. The result of her continual work is self-evident from her seven published books to date, ranging from her two full-length collections, “What a Light Thing, This Stone” and “Flying Yellow,” to several smaller booklets – called chapbooks – two books of prose poetry and a guide for student poets titled “The Roar on the Other Side.” Aside from teaching, Rhodes is also a freelance writer and editor, but noted that the work can be draining and leaves little room for her imaginative life. She hopes to obtain a writing grant that will allow her to devote more of her time to completing her third full-length poetry collection.
The final guiding principle for Rhodes’ work is community:
“Poetry is very private, but it’s also public. I like Robert Graves’ phrase ‘the reader over your shoulder.’ When we have an awareness of another reader, maybe just one reader, then it causes us to be more objective about what we’re doing, so we’re not going to have needless redundancies or tired, worn-out phrases. We’re going to want to bring as much delight and surprise as we can.”
Today, Rhodes is part of a group called the Ozark Mountain Poets, a branch of the Poets’ Roundtable of Arkansas, who meet monthly to discuss and critique each other’s poetry. Having come from the East Coast, she noted that she was impressed with the quality of work in the Arkansas literary scene. She has come to know a number of respected and published local poets like Gerry Sloan of Fayetteville. She also made note of Casie and Michael Dodd, founders of Belle Point Press in Fort Smith, who have already published numerous books since they began in 2021 in their mission to celebrate the literary culture and community of the Mid-South.
“It seems to be a very vibrant community of poets here that I’ve encountered, and I’m very happy about that,” Rhodes said.
While being part of a writing community is great, one should remember to be authentic, rather than attempt to fall in line and be trendy.
“It’s not about really striving to be unique or anything, but being true to yourself, to the way you see things,” Rhodes says. “And don’t compare yourself, because that’s so discouraging. That’s a complaint I get, ‘Oh, I’ll never be able to write like that.’ Well, it’s not a race. We’re not competing. It’s hard, but you’ve got to get it out of your blood. You’ve got to love your craft, you’ve got to love the discipline of it.
“You’ve got to love the place that you go to in your mind and your imagination. That is a sacred space, and it’s to be protected. It sounds trite to say it, but our frenetic age of distraction can really, really eat away from the creative self that we all possess. So it’s something to really guard.”
In Arkansas, the poet laureate tag is purely an honorary one, with no obligations or stipend, yet few poets could be content to do nothing with the opportunity.
“I don’t have to do anything in this office,” Rhodes said. “I could sit at home in my pajamas if I wanted to, but of course I’m not going to do that.”
Rhodes’ first project was to sponsor a poetry contest among homeschooled students. This year, hoping to reach out to overlooked communities, she has begun a poetry workshop with women at Magdalene Serenity House, a nonprofit organization that helps women who have experienced trauma, sexual exploitation, addiction and incarceration through safe housing, long-term support and community partnerships. She began the workshop in May and has been pleased with the early results.
“The first workshop went very well,” Rhodes said. “The women were responsive and jumped right in. I was pleased to see their imaginative powers rise to the prompts. I loved being with them and look forward to our next gathering.”
With more than half of her four-year term still ahead of her, Rhodes still has plenty of time to promote poetry in the state. After all, four years in Arkansas were all she needed to become poet laureate in the first place, and neither her career nor her mark on the state will end when her term concludes in 2026. There is plenty of time remaining for her, and for all of us, to see and to hear, to turn sights and sounds into words that will long outlive us.
